The Norfolk Record Office (NRO) will exhaust its strongroom capacity by 2028, councillors heard at a meeting of the Norfolk Records Committee on 24 July 2026 — and money earmarked to fix the problem has already been spent elsewhere.

Capital funding allocated in Norfolk County Council's 2026/27 budget to develop a business case for extra storage was reallocated by the Corporate Property Team to cover essential building maintenance. County Archivist Gary Tuson told the committee that further meetings were planned to work out how the business case could still be progressed.

A potential opportunity has emerged: the East Anglian Film Archive announced in late 2024 that it would not renew its lease at the Archive Centre when it expires in April 2028. That freed-up space could help ease the storage crunch, though no firm plans have been agreed.

The situation is expected to get significantly worse as Norfolk undergoes local government reorganisation (LGR). The NRO currently receives around 20 cubic metres of new records each year, but Tuson warned that LGR could trigger deposits of more than 100 cubic metres per year as district councils are wound up and their records transferred. There is also concern that some records could be permanently deleted before the NRO receives them, because the GDPR exemption for archives is not widely understood.

Committee members expressed alarm that the storage risk would grow more acute as reorganisation progresses. Tuson acknowledged that temporary offsite storage might be needed if a permanent solution is not found in time, which could carry a significant financial cost.

The committee voted unanimously to make LGR a standing item on its agenda, with a Structural Change Order expected to be laid in Parliament before the committee's next meeting in October 2026.